The preaching of Paul and Peter in Rome was an epoch
in the history of the church. It gave an impulse to the growth of
Christianity. Their martyrdom was even more effective in the end: it
cemented the bond of union between the Jewish and Gentile converts, and
consecrated the soil of the heathen metropolis. Jerusalem crucified the
Lord, Rome beheaded and crucified his chief apostles and plunged the
whole Roman church into a baptism of blood. Rome became, for good and
for evil, the Jerusalem of Christendom, and the Vatican hill the
Golgotha of the West. Peter and Paul, like a new Romulus and Remus,
laid the foundation of a spiritual empire vaster and more enduring than
that of the Caesars. The cross was substituted for the sword as the
symbol of conquest and power.515515 Lange on Romans, p. 29 (Am.
ed.): "As the light and darkness of Judaism was centralized in
Jerusalem, the theocratic city of God (the holy city, the murderer of
the prophets), so was heathen Rome, the humanitarian metropolis of the
world, the centre of all the elements of light and darkness prevalent
in the heathen world; and so did Christian Rome become the centre of
all the elements of vital light, and of all the antichristian darkness
in the Christian church. Hence Rome, like Jerusalem, not only possesses
a unique historical significance, but is a universal picture operative
through all ages. Christian Rome, especially, stands forth as a shining
light of the nations, which is turned into an idol of magical strength
to those who are subject to its rule."

But the change was effected at the sacrifice of
precious blood. The Roman empire was at first, by its laws of justice,
the protector of Christianity, without knowing its true character, and
came to the rescue of Paul on several critical occasions, as in Corinth
through the Proconsul Annaeus Gallio, in Jerusalem through the Captain
Lysias, and in Caesarea through the Procurator Festus. But now it
rushed into deadly conflict with the new religion, and opened, in the
name of idolatry and patriotism, a series of intermittent persecutions,
which ended at last in the triumph of the banner of the cross at the
Milvian bridge. Formerly a restraining power that kept back for a while
the outbreak of Antichrist,516516 In 2 Thess. 2:6, 7,
τὸ
κατέχον is the Roman empire, ὁ
κατέχων the emperor as its representative. This is the patristic
interpretation to which some of the beat modern commentators have
returned. Mediaeval sects and many Protestant writers found the great
apostacy in the Papacy and the restraining power in the German empire;
while papal commentators took revenge by fastening the charge of
apostacy on the Reformation which was restrained by the Papacy. I
believe in a repeated and growing fulfilment of this and other
prophecies on the historic basis of the apostolic age and the old Roman
empire. it now openly assumed the character of
Antichrist with fire and sword.517517 It is so represented in the
Apocalypse 13 –18 after the Neronian
persecution.

Nero.

The first of these imperial persecutions with
which the Martyrdom of Peter and Paul is connected by ecclesiastical
tradition, took place in the tenth year of Nero’s
reign, a.d. 64, and by the instigation of that
very emperor to whom Paul, as a Roman citizen, had appealed from the
Jewish tribunal. It was, however, not a strictly religious persecution,
like those under the later emperors; it originated in a public calamity
which was wantonly charged upon the innocent Christians.

A greater contrast can hardly be imagined than
that between Paul, one of the purest and noblest of men, and Nero, one
of the basest and vilest of tyrants. The glorious first five years of
Nero’s reign (54–59) under the wise
guidance of Seneca and Burrhus, make the other nine
(59–68) only more hideous by contrast. We read his
life with mingled feelings of contempt for his folly, and horror of his
wickedness. The world was to him a comedy and a tragedy, in which he
was to be the chief actor. He had an insane passion for popular
applause; he played on the lyre; he sung his odes at supper; he drove
his chariots in the circus; he appeared as a mimic on the stage, and
compelled men of the highest rank to represent in dramas or in tableaux
the obscenest of the Greek myths. But the comedian was surpassed by the
tragedian. He heaped crime upon crime until he became a proverbial
monster of iniquity. The murder of his brother (Britannicus), his
mother (Agrippina), his wives (Octavia and Poppaea), his teacher
(Seneca), and many eminent Romans, was fitly followed by his suicide in
the thirty-second year of his age. With him the family of Julius Caesar
ignominiously perished, and the empire became the prize of successful
soldiers and adventurers.518518 Comp. Renan’s
portraiture of Nero, l.c. ch. I. He thinks that there is no
parallel to this monster, and calls him un esprit prodigieusement déclamatoire, une
mauvaise nature, hypocrite, légère, vaniteuse; un
composé incroyable d’intelligence fausse,
de méchanceté profonde,
d’égoïsme atroce et sournois,
avee des raffinements inouïs de
subtilité."See also the
description of Merivale, ch. LV. (vol. VI. 245 sqq.).

The Conflagration in Rome.

For such a demon in human shape, the murder of a
crowd of innocent Christians was pleasant sport. The occasion of the
hellish spectacle was a fearful conflagration of Rome, the most
destructive and disastrous that ever occurred in history. It broke out
in the night between the 18th and 19th of July,519519 Tacitus (Ann. XV. 41)
gives the date quarto decimo
[ante] Kalendas Sextiles
... quo et Senones captam
urbem inflammaverant.
Friedländer, I. 6, wrongly makes it the 17th July. The coincidence with the
day when the Gauls had set fire to Rome (July 19, A. U. 364, or 453
years before), was considered a bad omen. It was in the tenth year of
Nero’s reign, ie., a.d. 64. See Clinton, Fasti
Romani, I. Oxon. 1845, pp. 45, 46;
Friedländer, l.c. I. 6; Schiller, l.c. pp. 173
sq.; Merivale, VI. 131, note. Eusebius, in his Chronicle,
erroneously puts the fire in the year 66. among the wooden shops in
the south-eastern end of the Great Circus, near the Palatine hill.520520 For a description of the Circus
Maximus see Friedländer, III. 293 sqq. The amphitheatrical
rows of seats were eight stadia long, with accommodation for 150,000
persons. After Nero’s reconstruction the seats
amounted to 250,000 under Vespasianum, and subsequent additions raised
the number, in the fourth century to 385,000. It was surrounded by
wooden buildings for shopkeepers (among whom were many Jews),
astrologers, caterers, prostitutes, and all sorts of amusements. Nero
was most extravagant in his expenditure for the circus and the theatre
to gratify the people’s passion for Panem et Circenses, to use
Juvenal’s words.
Lashed by the wind, it defied all exertions of the firemen and
soldiers, and raged with unabated fury for seven nights and six days.521521 "Per sex dies septemque noctes,"
Sueton. Nero, 38 sex
dies,"Tacit. Ann. XV. 4 Then
it burst out again in another part, near the field of Mars, and in
three days more laid waste two other districts of the city.522522 The nine days’
duration is proved by an inscription (Gruter, 61. 3). The great fire in
London in 1666 lasted only four days and swept an area of 436 acres.
Comp. Lambert’s Hist. of London,II. 91, quoted
by Merivale. The fire in Chicago lasted only thirty-six hours, October
8 and 9, 1871, but swept over nearly three and one-third square miles
(2,114 square acres), and destroyed 17,450 buildings, the homes of
98,500 people.

The calamity was incalculable. Only four of the
fourteen regions into which the city was divided, remained uninjured;
three, including the whole interior city from the Circus to the
Esquiline hill, were a shapeless mass of ruins; the remaining seven
were more or less destroyed; venerable temples, monumental buildings of
the royal, republican, and imperial times, the richest creations of
Greek art which had been collected for centuries, were turned into dust
and ashes; men and beasts perished in the flames, and the metropolis of
the world assumed the aspect of a graveyard with a million of mourners
over the loss of irreparable treasures.

This fearful catastrophe must have been before the
mind of St. John in the Apocalypse when he wrote his funeral dirge of
the downfall of imperial Rome (Apoc. 18).

The cause of the conflagration is involved in
mystery. Public rumor traced it to Nero, who wished to enjoy the lurid
spectacle of burning Troy, and to gratify his ambition to rebuild Rome
on a more magnificent scale, and to call it Neropolis.523523 Tacitus XV. 39:
"Pervaserat rumor ipso tempore flagrantis
urbis inisse eum domesticam scenam et cecinisse Troianum
excedium." Sueton. c. 38: "Quasi offensus deformitate veterum aedificiorum et
angustiis flexurisque vicorum [Nero]incendit Urbem ... Hoc incendium e turre
Maecenatiana prospectans, laetusque ’flammae,’ut ajebat,
’pulchritudine,’ἅλωσιν Ilii in illo suo scaenico habitu
decantavit."Robbers and ruffians were seen
to thrust blazing brands into the buildings, and, when seized, they
affirmed that they acted under higher orders. The elder Pliny,
Xiphilinus, and the author of the tragedy, Octavia, likewise charge
Nero with incendiarism. But Schiller, l.c. 425 sqq., labors to
relieve him of it. When the
fire broke out he was on the seashore at Antium, his birthplace; he
returned when the devouring element reached his own palace, and made
extraordinary efforts to stay and then to repair the disaster by a
reconstruction which continued till after his death, not forgetting to
replace his partially destroyed temporary residence (domus
transitoria) by "the golden house" (domus aurea), as a standing wonder of
architectural magnificence and extravagance.

The Persecution of the Christians.

To divert from himself the general suspicion of
incendiarism, and at the same time to furnish new entertainment for his
diabolical cruelty, Nero wickedly cast the blame upon the hated
Christians, who, meanwhile, especially since the public trial of Paul
and his successful labors in Rome, had come to be distinguished from
the Jews as a genus tertium, or as the most dangerous offshoot from
that race. They were certainly despisers of the Roman gods and loyal
subjects of a higher king than Caesar, and they were falsely suspected
of secret crimes. The police and people, under the influence of the
panic created by the awful calamity, were ready to believe the worst
slanders, and demanded victims. What could be expected of the ignorant
multitude, when even such cultivated Romans as Tacitus, Suetonius, and
Pliny, stigmatized Christianity as a vulgar and pestiferous
superstition. It appeared to them even worse than Judaism, which was at
least an ancient national religion, while Christianity was novel,
detached from any particular nationality, and aiming at universal
dominion. Some Christians were arrested, confessed their faith, and
were "convicted not so much," says Tacitus, "of the crime of
incendiarism as of hating the human race." Their Jewish origin, their
indifference to politics and public affairs, their abhorrence of
heathen customs, were construed into an "odium generis humani," and this made an attempt on
their part to destroy the city sufficiently plausible to justify a
verdict of guilty. An infuriated mob does not stop to reason, and is as
apt to run mad as an individual.

Under this wanton charge of incendiarism, backed
by the equally groundless charge of misanthropy and unnatural vice,
there began a carnival of blood such as even heathen Rome never saw
before or since.524524 We do not know the precise date
of the massacre. Mosheim fixes it on November, Renan on August, a.d. 64. Several weeks or months at all events must
have passed after the fire. If the traditional date of
Peter’s crucifixion be correct there would be an
interval of nearly a year between the conflagration, July 19, 64, and
his martyrdom, June 29th. It was the answer of the powers of hell to the
mighty preaching of the two chief apostles, which had shaken heathenism
to its centre. A "vast multitude" of Christians was put to death in the
most shocking manner. Some were crucified, probably in mockery of the
punishment of Christ,525525 "Crucibus affixi," says
Tacitus. This would well apply to Peter, to whom our Lord had
prophesied such a death, John 21:18, 19. Tertullian
says:"Romae Petrus passioni Dominicae
adaequatur"(De
Praescript. Haeret., c. 36; comp. Adv.
Marc., IV. 5; Scorpiace, 15). According to a later tradition
he was, at his own request, crucified with his head downwards, deeming
himself unworthy to be crucified as was his Lord. This is first
mentioned in the Acta Pauli, c. 81, by Origen (in Euseb. H.
E., III. 1) and more clearly by Jerome (Catal. 1); but is
doubtful, although such cruelties were occasionally practised (see
Josephus, Bell. Jud., V. 11, 1). Tradition mentions also the
martyrdom of Peter’s wife, who was cheered by the
apostle on her way to the place of execution and exhorted to remember
the Lord on the cross (μέμνησο
τοῦ
Κυρίου).
Clement of Alexandria, Strom. VII. 11, quoted by Eusebius, H.
E., III. 30. The orderly execution of Paul by the sword indicates a
regular legal process before, or more probably at least a year after,
the Neronian persecution in which his Roman citizenship would scarcely
have been respected. See p. 326. some sewed up in the skins of wild beasts and
exposed to the voracity of mad dogs in the arena. The satanic tragedy
reached its climax at night in the imperial gardens on the slope of the
Vatican (which embraced, it is supposed, the present site of the place
and church of St. Peter): Christian men and women, covered with pitch
or oil or resin, and nailed to posts of pine, were lighted and burned
as torches for the amusement of the mob; while Nero, in fantastical
dress, figured in a horse race, and displayed his art as charioteer.
Burning alive was the ordinary punishment of incendiaries; but only the
cruel ingenuity of this imperial monster, under the inspiration of the
devil, could invent such a horrible system of illumination.

This is the account of the greatest heathen
historian, the fullest we have—as the best description
of the destruction of Jerusalem is from the pen of the learned Jewish
historian. Thus enemies bear witness to the truth of Christianity.
Tacitus incidentally mentions in this connection the crucifixion of
Christ under Pontius Pilate, in the reign of Tiberius. With all his
haughty Roman contempt for the Christians whom he knew only from rumor
and reading, he was convinced of their innocence of incendiarism, and
notwithstanding his cold stoicism, he could not suppress a feeling of
pity for them because they were sacrificed not to the public good, but
to the ferocity of a wicked tyrant.

Some historians have doubted, not indeed the truth
of this terrible persecution, but that the Christians, rather than the
Jews, or the Christians alone, were the sufferers. It seems difficult
to understand that the harmless and peaceful Christians, whom the
contemporary writers, Seneca, Pliny, Lucan, Persius, ignore, while they
notice the Jews, should so soon have become the subjects of popular
indignation. It is supposed that Tacitus and Suetonius, writing some
fifty years after the event, confounded the Christians with the Jews,
who were generally obnoxious to the Romans, and justified the suspicion
of incendiarism by the escape of their transtiberine quarter from the
injury of the fire.526526 So Gibbon (ch. XVI.), more
recently Merivale, l.c. ch. 54 (vol. VI. 220, 4th ed.), and
Schiller, l.c., pp. 434, 585, followed by Hausrath and Stahr.
Merivale and Schiller assume that the persecution was aimed at the Jews
and Christians indiscriminately. Guizot, Milman, Neander, Gieseler,
Renan, Lightfoot, Wieseler, and Keim defend or assume the accuracy of
Tacitus and Suetonius.

But the atrocious act was too public to leave room
for such a mistake. Both Tacitus and Suetonius distinguish the two
sects, although they knew very little of either; and the former
expressly derives the name Christians from Christ, as the founder of
the new religion. Moreover Nero, as previously remarked, was not averse
to the Jews, and his second wife, Poppaea Sabina, a year before the
conflagration, had shown special favor to Josephus, and loaded him with
presents. Josephus speaks of the crimes of Nero, but says not a word of
any persecution of his fellow-religionists.527527Ant. XX. 8, 2,
3. This alone seems to be
conclusive. It is not unlikely that in this (as in all previous
persecutions, and often afterwards) the fanatical Jews, enraged by the
rapid progress of Christianity, and anxious to avert suspicion from
themselves, stirred up the people against the hated Galilaeans, and
that the heathen Romans fell with double fury on these supposed half
Jews, disowned by their own strange brethren.528528 So Ewald. VI. 627, and Renan,
L’Antechist, pp. 159 sqq. Renan ingeniously
conjectures that the "jealousy" to which Clement of Rome (Ad
Cor. 6) traces the persecution, refers to the divisions among the
Jews about the Christian religion.

The Probable Extent of the Persecution.

The heathen historians, if we are to judge from
their silence, seem to confine the persecution to the city of Rome, but
later Christian writers extend it to the provinces.529529 Orosius (about 400),
Hist., VII. 7: "Primus Romae
Christianos suppliciis et mortibus adferit [Nero],ac per omnes provincias
pari persecutione excruciari imperavit."So
also Sulpicius Severus, Chron. II. 29. Dodwell (Dissert.
Cypr. XI., De Paucitate martyrum, Gibbon, Milman, Merivale, and
Schiller (p. 438) deny, but Ewald (VI. 627, and in his Com. on the
Apoc.)and Renan (p. 183) very decidedly affirm the extension of the
persecution beyond Rome. "L’atrocité
commandée par Néron,"says Renan, "dut avor
des contre-coups dans les provinces et y exciter une recrudescence de
persécution." C. L. Roth (Werke des Tacitus, VI.
117) and Wieseler (Christenverfolgungen der Cäsaren, p. 11) assume that Nero condemned and prohibited
Christianity as dangerous to the state. Kiessling and De Rossi have
found in an inscription at Pompeii traces of a bloody persecution; but
the reading is dispated, see Schiller, p. 438, Friedländer
III. 529, and Renan, p. 184. The example set by
the emperor in the capital could hardly be without influence in the
provinces, and would justify the outbreak of popular hatred. If the
Apocalypse was written under Nero, or shortly after his death,
John’s exile to Patmos must be connected with this
persecution. It mentions imprisonments in Smyrna, the martyrdom of
Antipas in Pergamus, and speaks of the murder of prophets and saints
and all that have been slain on the earth.530530Apoc. 2:9, 10, 13; 16:6; 17:6;
18:24. The Epistle to the
Hebrews 10:32–34, which was written in Italy, probably
in the year 64, likewise alludes to bloody persecutions, and to the
release of Timothy from prison, 13:23. And Peter, in his first Epistle,
which may be assigned to the same year, immediately after the outbreak
of the persecution, and shortly before his death, warns the Christians
in Asia Minor of a fiery trial which is to try them, and of sufferings
already endured or to be endured, not for any crime, but for the name
of "Christians."5315311 Pet. 2:12, 19, 20; 3:14-18;
4:12-19. The name "Babylon"532532 At the close, 1 Pet. 5:13. not
on page 384 for Rome is most easily
explained by the time and circumstances of composition.

Christianity, which had just reached the age of
its founder, seemed annihilated in Rome. With Peter and Paul the first
generation of Christians was buried. Darkness must have overshadowed
the trembling disciples, and a despondency seized them almost as deep
as on the evening of the crucifixion, thirty-four years before. But the
morning of the resurrection was not far distant, and the very spot of
the martyrdom of St. Peter was to become the site of the greatest
church in Christendom and the palatial residence of his reputed
successors.533533 "Those who survey," says Gibbon
(ch. XVI.)."with a curious eye the revolutions of mankind, may observe
that the gardens and circus of Nero on the Vatican, which were polluted
with the blood of the first Christians, have been rendered still more
famous by the triumph and by the abuse of the persecuted religion. On
the same spot, a temple, which far surpasses the ancient glories of the
capital, has been since erected by the Christian pontiffs, who,
deriving their claim of universal dominion from a humble fisherman of
Galilee, have succeeded to the throne of the Caesars, given laws to the
barbarian conquerors of Rome, and extended their spiritual jurisdiction
from the coast of the Baltic to the shores of the Pacific Ocean." Comp.
Renan, L’Antechr. p. 177:
"L’orgie de
Néron fut le grand baptême de sanq qui
désiqna Rome, comme la ville des martyrs, pour jouer un
rôle à part dans l’histoire du
christianisme, et en étre la seconde ville sainte. Ce fut la
prise de possession de la colline Vatcane par ces triomphateurs
d’un genre inconnu jusque-là
... Rome, rendue responsable de tout le sang versé, devint comme
Babylone une sorte de ville sacramentelle et
symbolique."

The Apocalypse on the Neronian Persecution.

None of the leading apostles remained to record
the horrible massacre, except John. He may have heard of it in Ephesus,
or he may have accompanied Peter to Rome and escaped a fearful death in
the Neronian gardens, if we are to credit the ancient tradition of his
miraculous preservation from being burnt alive with his
fellow-Christians in that hellish illumination on the Vatican hill.534534 Tertullian mentions it in
connection with the crucifixion of Peter and the decapitation of Paul
as apparently occurring at the same time; De Praescript. Haer., c.36:
"Ista quam felix ecclesia (the church of Rome) cui totam
doctrinam apostoli sanguine suo profuderunt, ubi Petrus passioni
Dominicae adaequatur, ubi Paulus Joannis exitu coronatur, ubi Apostolus
Joannes, posteaquam
in oleum igneum demersus nihil passus est, in insulam
relegatur." Comp. Jerome, Adv.
Jovin., 1, 26, and in Matt. 22: 23; and Euseb., H.
E., VI. 5. Renan (p. 196) conjectures that John was destined to
shine in the illumination of the Neronian gardens, and was actually
steeped in oil for the purpose, but saved by an accident or caprice.
Thiersch (Die Kirche im Apost. Zeitalter, p. 227, third edition,
1879) likewise accepts the tradition of Tertullian, but assumes a
miraculous deliverance. At
all events he was himself a victim of persecution for the name of
Jesus, and depicted its horrors, as an exile on the lonely island of
Patmos in the vision of the Apocalypse.

This mysterious book—whether
written between 68 and 69, or under Domitian in 95—was
undoubtedly intended for the church of that age as well as for future
ages, and must have been sufficiently adapted to the actual condition
and surroundings of its first readers to give them substantial aid and
comfort in their fiery trials. Owing to the nearness of events alluded
to, they must have understood it even better, for practical purposes,
than readers of later generations. John looks, indeed, forward to the
final consummation, but he sees the end in the beginning. He takes his
standpoint on the historic foundation of the old Roman empire in which
he lived, as the visions of the prophets of Israel took their departure
from the kingdom of David or the age of the Babylonian captivity. He
describes the heathen Rome of his day as "the beast that ascended out
of the abyss," as "a beast coming out of the sea, having ten horns and
seven heads" (or kings, emperors), as "the great harlot that sitteth
among many waters," as a "woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast,
full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns," as
"Babylon the great, the mother of the harlots and of the abominations
of the earth."535535Rev. 11:7; 13:1; 17:1, 3, 5.
Comp. Daniel’s description of the fourth (Roman)
beast, "dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly," with "ten
horns,"Dan. 7:7 sqq. The seer must have in view the Neronian
persecution, the most cruel that ever occurred, when he calls the woman
seated on seven hills, "drunken with the blood of the saints and with
the blood of the martyrs of Jesus,"536536Rev. 17:6. and prophesied her
downfall as a matter of rejoicing for the "saints and apostles and
prophets."537537Rev. 18:2. Comp. also Rev.
6:9-11.

Recent commentators discover even a direct
allusion to Nero, as expressing in Hebrew letters (Neron Kesar)
the mysterious number 666, and as being the fifth of the seven heads of
the beast which was slaughtered, but would return again from the abyss
as Antichrist. But this interpretation is uncertain, and in no case can
we attribute to John the belief that Nero would literally rise from the
dead as Antichrist. He meant only that Nero, the persecutor of the
Christian church, was (like Antiochus Epiphanes) the forerunner of
Antichrist, who would be inspired by the same bloody spirit from the
infernal world. In a similar sense Rome was a second Babylon, and John
the Baptist another Elijah.

Notes.

I. The Accounts of the Neronian
Persecution.

1. From heathen historians.

We have chiefly two accounts of the first imperial
persecution, from Tacitus, who was born about
eight years before the event, and probably survived Trajan (d. 117),
and from Suetonius, who wrote his XII.
Caesares a little later, about a.d. 120.
Dion Cassius (born circa a.d. 155), in his History of Rome (Ῥωμαικὴ
Ἰστορία, preserved in fragments, and in
the abridgment of the monk Xiphilinus), from the arrival of Aeneas to
a.d. 229, mentions the conflagration of Rome,
but ignores the persecutions of the Christians.

The description of Tacitus is in his terse, pregnant, and graphic style, and
beyond suspicion of interpolation, but has some obscurities. We give it
in full, from Annal., XV. 44

"But not all the relief of men, nor the bounties
of the emperor, nor the propitiation of the gods, could relieve him
[Nero] from the infamy of being believed to have ordered the
conflagration. Therefore, in order to suppress the rumor, Nero falsely
charged with the guilt, and punished with the most exquisite tortures,
those persons who, hated for their crimes, were commonly called
Christians (subdidit reos, et quaesitissimis poenis affecit,
quos per flagitia invisos vulgus
’Christianos’ appellabat). The founder of that name,
Christus, had been put to death
(supplicio
affectus erat) by
the procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, in the reign of Tiberius; but
the pernicious superstition (exitiabilis superstitio), repressed for a time,538538 This refers either to the
crucifixion, or more probably to the edict of Claudius, who banished
the Jews and Jewish Christians from Rome. See above, p. 363. broke out
again, not only through Judaea, the source of this evil, but also
through the city [of Rome], whither all things vile and shameful flow
from all quarters, and are encouraged (quo cuncta undique atrocia aut
pudenda confluunt celebranturque). Accordingly, first, those only were
arrested who confessed.539539 Confessed what? Probably the
Christian religion, which was already regarded as a sort of crime. If
they confessed to be guilty of incendiarism, they must have been either
weak neophytes who could not stand the pain of the torture, or hired
scoundrels. Next, on their information, a vast multitude
(multitudo
ingens), were convicted,
not so much of the crime of incendiarism as of hatred of the human race
(odio humani
generis).540540 This is to be understood in the
active sense of the reputed enmity to mankind, with which Tacitus
charges the Jews also in almost the same terms ("Adversus omnes
alios hostile odium," Hist. V. 5). But Thiersch and others
explain it of the hatred of mankind towards the Christians (comp. Matt.
10:22, "Ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s
sake"). And in
their deaths they were made the subjects of sport; for they were
wrapped in the hides of wild beasts and torn to pieces by dogs, or
nailed to crosses, or set on fire, and when day declined, were burned
to serve for nocturnal lights (in usum nocturni luminis urerentur). Nero had offered his own gardens
[on the Vatican] for this spectacle, and also exhibited a chariot race
on the occasion, now mingling in the crowd in the dress of a
charioteer, now actually holding the reins. Whence a feeling of
compassion arose towards the sufferers, though justly held to be
odious, because they seemed not to be cut off for the public good, but
as victims to the ferocity of one man."

The account of Suetonius,
Nero, c. 16, is very short and unsatisfactory: "Afflicti suppliciis
Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae ac maleficaea." He does not connect the
persecution with the conflagration, but with police regulations.

Juvenal, the satirical
poet, alludes, probably as an eye-witness, to the persecution, like
Tacitus, with mingled feelings of contempt and pity for the Christian
sufferers (Sat. I. 155):

"Dar’st thou speak of
Tigellinus’ guilt?

Thou too shalt shine like those we saw

Stand at the stake with throat transfixed

Smoking and burning."

2. From Christians.

Clement of Rome, near the
close of the first century, must refer to the Neronian persecution when
he writes of the "vast multitude of the elect "who suffered, many
indignities and tortures, being the victims of jealousy; "and of
Christian women who were made to personate "Danaides" and "Dirces,"
Ad Corinth., c. 6. I have made no use of this passage in the
text. Renan amplifies and weaves it into his graphic description of the
persecution (L’Antechrist, pp. 163 sqq., almost
literally repeated in his Hibbert Lectures). According to the
legend, Dirce was bound to a raging bull and dragged to death. The
scene is represented in the famous marble group in the museum at
Naples. But the Danaides can furnish no suitable parallel to Christian
martyrs, unless, as Renan suggests, Nero had the sufferings of the
Tartarus represented. Lightfoot, following the bold emendation of
Wordsworth (on Theocritus, XXVI. 1), rejects the reading Δαναΐδες
καὶ
Δίρκαι(which is retained in all editions,
including that of Gebhardt and Harnack), and substitutes for it νεανίδες,
παιδίσκαι, so that Clement would say:,
Matrons (γυναῖκες) maidens,
slave-girls, being persecuted, after suffering cruel and unholy
insults, safely reached the goal in the race of faith, and received a
noble reward, feeble though they were in body."

Tertullian (d. about 220)
thus alludes to the Neronian persecution, Ad Nationes, I. ch. 7:
"This name of ours took its rise in the reign of Augustus; under
Tiberius it was taught with all clearness and publicity; under Nero
it was ruthlessly condemned (sub Nerone damnatio invaluit), and you may weigh its worth and
character even from the person of its persecutor. If that prince was a
pious man, then the Christians are impious; if he was just, if he was
pure, then the Christians are unjust and impure; if he was not a public
enemy, we are enemies of our country: what sort of men we are, our
persecutor himself shows, since he of course punished what produced
hostility to himself. Now, although every other institution which
existed under Nero has been destroyed, yet this of ours has firmly
remained—righteous, it would seem, as being unlike the
author [of its persecution]."

Sulpicius Severus,
Chron. II. 28, 29, gives a pretty full account, but mostly from
Tacitus. He and Orosius (Hist. VII. 7)
first clearly assert that Nero extended the persecution to the
provinces.

II. Nero’s
Return as Antichrist.

Nero, owing to his youth, beauty, dash, and
prodigality, and the startling novelty of his wickedness (Tacitus calls
him "incredibilium
cupitor,"
Ann. XV. 42), enjoyed a certain popularity with the vulgar
democracy of Rome. Hence, after his suicide, a rumor spread among the
heathen that he was not actually dead, but had fled to the Parthians,
and would return to Rome with an army and destroy the city. Three
impostors under his name used this belief and found support during the
reigns of Otho, Titus, and Domitian. Even thirty years later Domitian
trembled at the name of Nero. Tacit., Hist. I. 2; II. 8, 9;
Sueton., Ner. 57; Dio Cassius, LXIV. 9; Schiller, l.c.,
p. 288.

Among the Christians the rumor assumed a form
hostile to Nero. Lactantius (De Mort. Persecut., c. 2) mentions
the Sibylline saying that, as Nero was the first persecutor, he would
also be the last, and precede the advent of Antichrist. Augustin (De
Civil. Dei, XX. 19) mentions that at his time two opinions were
still current in the church about Nero: some supposed that he would
rise from the dead as Antichrist, others that he was not dead, but
concealed, and would live until he should be revealed and restored to
his kingdom. The former is the Christian, the latter the heathen
belief. Augustin rejects both. Sulpicius Severus (Chron., II.
29) also mentions the belief (unde creditur) that Nero, whose
deadly wound was healed, would return at the end of the world to work
out "the mystery of lawlessness" predicted by Paul (2 Thess. 2:7).

Some commentators make the Apocalypse responsible
for this absurd rumor and false belief, while others hold that the
writer shared it with his heathen contemporaries. The passages adduced
are Apoc. 17:8:
"The beast was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss
and to go into perdition" ... "the beast was, and is not, and shall be
present" (καὶ
πάρεσται, notκαίπερ
ἐστίν, "and yet is," as the E. V. reads with
the text. ec.); 17:11: "And
the beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is of
the seven; and he goeth into perdition;" and 13:3: "And I saw one of his heads as though
it had been smitten unto death; and his death-stroke was healed: and
the whole world wondered after the beast."

But this is said of the beast, i.e., the Roman
empire, which is throughout clearly distinguished from the seven heads,
i.e., the emperors. In Daniel, too, the beast is collective.
Moreover, a distinction must be made between the death of one ruler
(Nero) and the deadly wound which thereby was inflicted on the beast or
the empire, but from which it recovered (under Vespasian).

515 Lange on Romans, p. 29 (Am.
ed.): "As the light and darkness of Judaism was centralized in
Jerusalem, the theocratic city of God (the holy city, the murderer of
the prophets), so was heathen Rome, the humanitarian metropolis of the
world, the centre of all the elements of light and darkness prevalent
in the heathen world; and so did Christian Rome become the centre of
all the elements of vital light, and of all the antichristian darkness
in the Christian church. Hence Rome, like Jerusalem, not only possesses
a unique historical significance, but is a universal picture operative
through all ages. Christian Rome, especially, stands forth as a shining
light of the nations, which is turned into an idol of magical strength
to those who are subject to its rule."

516 In 2 Thess. 2:6, 7,
τὸ
κατέχον is the Roman empire, ὁ
κατέχων the emperor as its representative. This is the patristic
interpretation to which some of the beat modern commentators have
returned. Mediaeval sects and many Protestant writers found the great
apostacy in the Papacy and the restraining power in the German empire;
while papal commentators took revenge by fastening the charge of
apostacy on the Reformation which was restrained by the Papacy. I
believe in a repeated and growing fulfilment of this and other
prophecies on the historic basis of the apostolic age and the old Roman
empire.

517 It is so represented in the
Apocalypse 13 –18 after the Neronian
persecution.

520 For a description of the Circus
Maximus see Friedländer, III. 293 sqq. The amphitheatrical
rows of seats were eight stadia long, with accommodation for 150,000
persons. After Nero’s reconstruction the seats
amounted to 250,000 under Vespasianum, and subsequent additions raised
the number, in the fourth century to 385,000. It was surrounded by
wooden buildings for shopkeepers (among whom were many Jews),
astrologers, caterers, prostitutes, and all sorts of amusements. Nero
was most extravagant in his expenditure for the circus and the theatre
to gratify the people’s passion for Panem et Circenses, to use
Juvenal’s words.

522 The nine days’
duration is proved by an inscription (Gruter, 61. 3). The great fire in
London in 1666 lasted only four days and swept an area of 436 acres.
Comp. Lambert’s Hist. of London,II. 91, quoted
by Merivale. The fire in Chicago lasted only thirty-six hours, October
8 and 9, 1871, but swept over nearly three and one-third square miles
(2,114 square acres), and destroyed 17,450 buildings, the homes of
98,500 people.

524 We do not know the precise date
of the massacre. Mosheim fixes it on November, Renan on August, a.d. 64. Several weeks or months at all events must
have passed after the fire. If the traditional date of
Peter’s crucifixion be correct there would be an
interval of nearly a year between the conflagration, July 19, 64, and
his martyrdom, June 29th.

525 "Crucibus affixi," says
Tacitus. This would well apply to Peter, to whom our Lord had
prophesied such a death, John 21:18, 19. Tertullian
says:"Romae Petrus passioni Dominicae
adaequatur"(De
Praescript. Haeret., c. 36; comp. Adv.
Marc., IV. 5; Scorpiace, 15). According to a later tradition
he was, at his own request, crucified with his head downwards, deeming
himself unworthy to be crucified as was his Lord. This is first
mentioned in the Acta Pauli, c. 81, by Origen (in Euseb. H.
E., III. 1) and more clearly by Jerome (Catal. 1); but is
doubtful, although such cruelties were occasionally practised (see
Josephus, Bell. Jud., V. 11, 1). Tradition mentions also the
martyrdom of Peter’s wife, who was cheered by the
apostle on her way to the place of execution and exhorted to remember
the Lord on the cross (μέμνησο
τοῦ
Κυρίου).
Clement of Alexandria, Strom. VII. 11, quoted by Eusebius, H.
E., III. 30. The orderly execution of Paul by the sword indicates a
regular legal process before, or more probably at least a year after,
the Neronian persecution in which his Roman citizenship would scarcely
have been respected. See p. 326.

526 So Gibbon (ch. XVI.), more
recently Merivale, l.c. ch. 54 (vol. VI. 220, 4th ed.), and
Schiller, l.c., pp. 434, 585, followed by Hausrath and Stahr.
Merivale and Schiller assume that the persecution was aimed at the Jews
and Christians indiscriminately. Guizot, Milman, Neander, Gieseler,
Renan, Lightfoot, Wieseler, and Keim defend or assume the accuracy of
Tacitus and Suetonius.

528 So Ewald. VI. 627, and Renan,
L’Antechist, pp. 159 sqq. Renan ingeniously
conjectures that the "jealousy" to which Clement of Rome (Ad
Cor. 6) traces the persecution, refers to the divisions among the
Jews about the Christian religion.

533 "Those who survey," says Gibbon
(ch. XVI.)."with a curious eye the revolutions of mankind, may observe
that the gardens and circus of Nero on the Vatican, which were polluted
with the blood of the first Christians, have been rendered still more
famous by the triumph and by the abuse of the persecuted religion. On
the same spot, a temple, which far surpasses the ancient glories of the
capital, has been since erected by the Christian pontiffs, who,
deriving their claim of universal dominion from a humble fisherman of
Galilee, have succeeded to the throne of the Caesars, given laws to the
barbarian conquerors of Rome, and extended their spiritual jurisdiction
from the coast of the Baltic to the shores of the Pacific Ocean." Comp.
Renan, L’Antechr. p. 177:
"L’orgie de
Néron fut le grand baptême de sanq qui
désiqna Rome, comme la ville des martyrs, pour jouer un
rôle à part dans l’histoire du
christianisme, et en étre la seconde ville sainte. Ce fut la
prise de possession de la colline Vatcane par ces triomphateurs
d’un genre inconnu jusque-là
... Rome, rendue responsable de tout le sang versé, devint comme
Babylone une sorte de ville sacramentelle et
symbolique."

534 Tertullian mentions it in
connection with the crucifixion of Peter and the decapitation of Paul
as apparently occurring at the same time; De Praescript. Haer., c.36:
"Ista quam felix ecclesia (the church of Rome) cui totam
doctrinam apostoli sanguine suo profuderunt, ubi Petrus passioni
Dominicae adaequatur, ubi Paulus Joannis exitu coronatur, ubi Apostolus
Joannes, posteaquam
in oleum igneum demersus nihil passus est, in insulam
relegatur." Comp. Jerome, Adv.
Jovin., 1, 26, and in Matt. 22: 23; and Euseb., H.
E., VI. 5. Renan (p. 196) conjectures that John was destined to
shine in the illumination of the Neronian gardens, and was actually
steeped in oil for the purpose, but saved by an accident or caprice.
Thiersch (Die Kirche im Apost. Zeitalter, p. 227, third edition,
1879) likewise accepts the tradition of Tertullian, but assumes a
miraculous deliverance.

538 This refers either to the
crucifixion, or more probably to the edict of Claudius, who banished
the Jews and Jewish Christians from Rome. See above, p. 363.

539 Confessed what? Probably the
Christian religion, which was already regarded as a sort of crime. If
they confessed to be guilty of incendiarism, they must have been either
weak neophytes who could not stand the pain of the torture, or hired
scoundrels.

540 This is to be understood in the
active sense of the reputed enmity to mankind, with which Tacitus
charges the Jews also in almost the same terms ("Adversus omnes
alios hostile odium," Hist. V. 5). But Thiersch and others
explain it of the hatred of mankind towards the Christians (comp. Matt.
10:22, "Ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s
sake").